Rocky Road

by Josi S. Kilpack

  Sadie’s phone chimed a text message as she made her way down the hall, but she waited until she was in her room before she checked it.

  Caro: I’m on my way. Just leaving St. George.

  Sadie raised her eyebrows and immediately called Caro back. She didn’t have the patience for texting right now and didn’t want to tempt Caro to text her back while driving.

  “You’re coming to Pine Valley?” Sadie asked when Caro answered.

  “Tess and I had a good talk, and she finally realized that this isn’t about her.”

  Sadie raised her eyebrows again. “Well done.” She’d love to have overheard that conversation.

  “Thanks,” Caro said. “I guess I do have something to add to all of this other than my pickpocketing skills.”

  “You have a lot to add,” Sadie assured her. “I’d have left Tess on the side of the road a long time ago if it weren’t for you.”

  Caro laughed, but then seemed embarrassed that she had. “Enough about that. Any tips I need on finding this place?”

  “Well, there are only three businesses in town, so once you get here you won’t have a hard time finding it. Make sure you turn left at the T-intersection with the white church on the side.”

  They finished the call a minute later. Sadie hung up the phone with a smile on her face and moved her overnight bag to the bed closest to the bathroom. There was a nightstand between the two beds and a dresser across from them upon which sat the TV Sadie wouldn’t be turning on. While waiting for Caro to arrive, she decided to look into Anita Hendricks, who had now risen to the top of the list of people she wanted to know more about.

  Over the course of the next thirty minutes, Sadie learned that Anita was originally from Atlanta. She’d done an internship in college with the American Heart Association, the first of half a dozen charity organizations she’d been employed with since then. It was easy to track her evolution through the different events she’d coordinated over the last fifteen years and, setting her suspicion aside, Sadie had to admit that Anita was certainly a go-getter, with a passion for charity work.

  Sadie wondered what had prompted her to make cancer her focus. Had she lost a family member or in some other way been directly affected by the disease in the past? In all the information Sadie ferreted out, including company bios and a few articles where Anita was quoted for one reason or another, Sadie never could discern a solid motivation. Anita never talked about her childhood, family, or personal mission. Instead, anything she said was about the focus of the organization she was representing. When Anita’s timeline intersected with the Red Rock Cancer Foundation, Sadie shifted her focus to looking at the foundation as a whole, rather than at Anita specifically. She read up on the foundation’s public mission and history and then dug into databases for the bones of the organizational structure.

  Sadie located the registered articles of incorporation pretty easily and was able to verify the start date, board members, and federal approval for the nonprofit status. Everything looked good until Sadie realized there was no mention of the boutique within the document. It often took some time for the public domains to reflect updates to public records like this, but the boutique had been in operation for nearly two years. If a change to the articles had been made, those changes should have been reflected in the information available to the public. Sadie made a note to see if the oversight was due to a backlog of Utah nonprofit updates being posted. Writing the note, however, gave her another idea, and she started a new entity search. This time, she looked specifically for the Pink Posy Boutique. Her head was killing her, but she wanted to wait up for Caro, and the hunt for information took her thoughts away from the pain. A little bit, anyway.

  When the search found a match with a company registered in Washington County, Utah, Sadie assumed she’d simply misunderstood and that the boutique was its own nonprofit organization, rather than an appendage of the Red Rock Cancer Foundation. She sat up straighter, however, when she realized that, while the boutique was registered as a separate entity, it was not a nonprofit. Instead, it was a Limited Liability Company—a business model under no umbrella of charity.

  Sadie went back to the boutique’s website and read every word of the “About Us” pages to confirm whether or not it said specifically that the boutique was part of the Red Rock Cancer Foundation, a nonprofit company. It did. Sadie went back to the official website listing entity information and dug as far as it would take her—which wasn’t very far because this was a private business and therefore protected from the public scrutiny nonprofits were subject to. Jacob Waters’s name wasn’t mentioned anywhere on the boutique paperwork. Anita Hendricks was listed as the owner of the company, with Trenton Hendricks as vice president.

  Sadie’s phone rang and she glanced at the caller ID. It was Caro.

  “Hey,” Sadie said into the phone, distracted by what she’d just discovered and still trying to wrap her head around the fact that the boutique was a for-profit company. Someone was making money.

  “It was tricky to find one motel in such a sprawling metropolis, but I think I made it. What room are you in?”

  “I’m in room six,” Sadie said, standing up to stretch her increasingly sore back. Was it too soon to take more Tylenol? “I’ve found something I want to show you.”

  “Okay. I’ll be right there.”

  Once Caro reached the room, Sadie ushered her into the desk chair Sadie had been sitting in minutes earlier. Sadie filled her in on what she’d found, letting her read the nonprofit assurance on the boutique’s website for herself before changing to the website that listed the boutique as an LLC.

  “What does that mean?” Caro asked.

  “It means the boutique is a for-profit company. It makes money.”

  “That it donates to cancer research, right?”

  Sadie looked over Caro’s shoulder and read the registration information again. “It’s not required to. It’s a regular business like any other clothing store without any tax exemptions or scrutiny of its books to prove its donations.”

  Sadie went on to explain the general points of a limited liability company versus a corporation and, specifically, a 501c tax exemption approval from the federal government. When she’d had her own private investigation business in Garrison, Colorado, she’d become familiar with business entities and the like while investigating a fraud case. She hadn’t expected it would come in very handy once she finished that case, and soon after that she had closed her business. But knowledge was power, and it was validating to have this bit of knowledge on hand right now. “If they are giving money to cancer research, the boutique should be a nonprofit to protect them from the tax liabilities of running a traditional company. To use an LLC as an entity to raise money makes no sense at all—the whole point of a limited liability is that there is someone carrying that liability and that person is usually the one making money. And being an LLC keeps their financial information private, whereas an IRS-registered nonprofit is required to make their tax returns public.”

  “So no one is verifying that the money raised by the boutique goes toward research?” Caro summarized.

  “Nope. It doesn’t mean that the boutique isn’t making the donations, but it’s a really strange way for them to organize it, and the fact that Anita Hendricks has been involved in this type of industry for so long makes this even stranger—she knows how to set up and run a nonprofit, so why didn’t she do that with the boutique?” Sadie leaned forward and with her pen tapped the screen of her laptop, right where it said that the boutique was a nonprofit.

  “But ... if they say they’re a nonprofit and they’re not, that’s fraud,” Caro said. “Wouldn’t the IRS have figured this out? Or the police?”

  “If there were an investigation going on with that, why would Officer Nielson be closing the case?”

  “Good point.”

  Sadie waved Caro out of the chair, explaining she needed to look up something else on the computer. Caro complied, taking Sadi
e’s place standing behind the chair while Sadie Googled watch groups who reported on charity organizations. Once she found a credible watch-group website, she did a search for the Red Rock Cancer Foundation and found good ratings.

  “The boutique wouldn’t be there, though, would it?” Caro pointed out when Sadie typed the name of the boutique into the search bar. “It’s not a charity organization.”

  “True.” Sadie did a few more searches, but she couldn’t find anything that showed these watch groups had any idea what the boutique was doing. Maybe because the boutique was in such a small area, it had flown under the radar, or perhaps it was new enough that people weren’t aware of the discrepancy. Everyone Sadie had talked to in southern Utah seemed to take the foundation and, by default, the boutique at their word.

  At the bottom of the screen, Sadie found a “contact us” link. She clicked on it and was taken to a comment form she didn’t hesitate to fill with the basics of what she’d just discovered, requesting they contact her for additional details. The chance that they would contact her tonight was zero. The chance that they would contact her tomorrow wasn’t much better, and the fact that the boutique wasn’t a charity organization might put her concerns outside of their sphere altogether—but who else could she talk to?

  Officer Nielson came to mind, and she bit her lip while she considered it, argued with herself about it, and eventually decided she had to share what she knew. Feeling territorial in regard to things she learned wasn’t a new feeling, but she had to consciously remind herself that this case was different from any other case she’d worked before. She was working with the police this time, and she’d given her word to turn over anything she discovered to them. Even if it were difficult to do.

  “Caro, could you get my phone out of my purse? I’d better tell Officer Nielson about this.”

  Caro crossed to the bed and retrieved Sadie’s phone for her. Sadie wanted to call Officer Nielson before she talked herself out of it. He didn’t answer, so she left a brief message about what they’d uncovered and asked him to call her for more details. She also told him it could wait for the next morning.

  She and Caro spent another half hour digging into anything they could think of for dirt on the boutique, but all they found were glowing reviews from customers and several comments about how good it felt to shop for a cause. There wasn’t a single complaint registered with the Better Business Bureau.

  Sadie did find a series of articles focused on fraudulent cancer foundations. She was shocked to learn that in the past year over 1,400 foundations in the United States were supposedly raising money for cancer. Of those 1,400, it was estimated that well over 1,200 were donating less than sixty percent of their profits. Some were completely fraudulent in their claims and admitted to donating only manpower for events rather than actual money.

  From what Sadie read, she could see that there were millions of dollars unaccounted for in the breast cancer fund-raising market. Instead of raising money for research, most “Pink” merchandise didn’t raise a penny for anyone other than the business owner who cashed in on the altruistic appeal of their products. Sadie would never look at the pink coffee mugs and chef’s knives sold every October the same way again. Was there an arm of the government that oversaw the 1,200 companies that weren’t getting good ratings? Would watch groups come to a small town in the Utah desert to sniff out possible misrepresentations?

  It was Sadie’s throbbing head that finally sent her to bed. She and Caro both felt encouraged but exhausted. Sadie took two more Tylenol and tried to find a position for her head on the pillow that didn’t make the pain worse. She wished Pete were available to talk to—she could use his expertise. And his advice.

  Soon they had turned off the lights, and the hum of the air conditioning unit provided the backdrop of what Sadie hoped would be a good night’s sleep. “If we’re right,” she said, “and there was some shady stuff going on with the foundation, Dr. Hendricks had a reason to leave town.”

  “I thought about that,” Caro said. “But it’s Anita who owns the boutique.”

  “He’s on the paperwork, too, and he has a medical license to lose.”

  “A medical license he gave up if, in fact, he disappeared to escape what they’d done.”

  “Good point,” Sadie said. “Running would save him the public embarrassment, though. People go to great lengths to preserve their reputations.”

  After a stretch of silence, Caro spoke again. “I was thinking about that phone call from the motel to Lori.”

  “Yeah?” Sadie asked, pushing aside the other thoughts so she could be on the same page Caro was.

  “It seems like most of the people who could have upset her that much were at the service—like in-laws or old friends or someone like that. But I didn’t pick up any specific tension between her and anyone there.”

  “Except Anita,” Sadie said.

  “Right, but I can’t imagine that Anita called her from Pine Valley the morning of the memorial service.”

  Another good point. “True.”

  “And Lori kept checking her phone, which I thought might have meant she was waiting for the attorney to call her back. But then I wondered if it could be something else. Or someone else.”

  “Like who?” Sadie said, but an itch of an idea had started tickling her chest.

  “Well, if I had to disappear for some reason, the people it would be the very hardest for me not to have contact with would be my kids.”

  “Right,” Sadie agreed as the itch got stronger.

  “But if my kids were young, whoever was taking care of them would be the next hardest person to cut ties with.”

  Sadie considered that, really considered it, and finally scratched that growing itch. “You think Dr. Hendricks may have called Lori from this motel?”

  “I know it’s a long shot, and I’m probably just really tired, but it did cross my mind. And now that we’ve determined a couple of possible reasons for him to leave, it feels more possible. A call from him would certainly send Lori into a tailspin, don’t you think? And if he were asking for help to come out of hiding, wouldn’t contacting an attorney be a reasonable thing to ask her to help him with?”

  Sadie picked up the train of thought. “And the mother of your children would want to go about things in a way that had the least impact on the children. What I mean is, Lori wouldn’t go to the newspapers. She’d want to protect her kids.” Sadie’s battered mind was racing. “An attorney could help with that, especially if Dr. Hendricks were to think he’s coming back to criminal charges.”

  “In fact, he might want an attorney with him when he turned himself in.”

  “Except that Kyle Edger is a contract and patent attorney, not criminal.”

  “Maybe he’s a friend of Dr. H and could give him a recommendation,” Caro suggested.

  “You’re very good at this, you know,” Sadie said into the dark.

  “Well, thank you,” Caro answered, obviously pleased by the compliment. “I guess we’ll find out tomorrow if any of these ideas turn out to be worth anything.”

  Chapter 19

  The next morning, Sadie woke up with Caro’s theory thick in her brain. Her head still hurt, but not nearly the way it had the night before. The swelling had gone down, but the bruising was worse. Thankfully, between Caro and herself they were able to cover it enough that she didn’t think anyone else would notice it. Their work here felt more important than ever, which is why Sadie frowned when Officer Nielson hadn’t called them back before they shut the door to their room behind them. It was after eight o’clock in the morning and Sadie hoped to have heard from him by now.

  “The gal we want to talk to is Candace,” Caro said as they headed toward the lobby. The smell of waffles made Sadie’s stomach growl. She hadn’t had dinner the night before, and she couldn’t remember when she had last skipped a meal because there were too many other thoughts distracting her from the need for sustenance. They turned the corner into the lobby a
nd approached the front desk, where a woman was plinking away at a computer keyboard. She looked up when they approached and smiled.

  “Good morning,” the woman said in precisely the way Sadie would expect a morning desk clerk at a hotel to respond to a guest.

  “Good morning,” Sadie and Caro said in unison. They looked at each other and Sadie ducked her chin, turning the interview over to Caro. After all, Caro was the one who’d initially called Pine Valley.

  “Hi,” Caro said, glancing down at the gold name tag on the woman’s shirt. “You’re Candace?”

  “Yes, ma’am. May I help you?”

  “Well, I think so,” Caro said. “Someone called a friend of mine from the front desk phone yesterday, and I’m trying to figure out who that someone was. Were you working yesterday morning?”

  The openness of the woman’s expression closed in a flash, and Sadie tensed slightly in response. “I will not give out information about our guests.”

  “Oh,” Caro said, blinking in surprise. “I’m not going to get you in trouble or anything. I just really need to know who made that call.”

  “Joanna called me after you talked to her yesterday, and I reminded her of our policy not to talk about our guests. Is there something else I can help you with?”

  “Oh, um ...” Caro swallowed.

  “So it was a guest?” Sadie cut in. “Whoever used the phone was staying here?”

  Candace paused long enough to give Sadie confidence to move forward. “I understand why you would want to protect the identity of someone staying at the motel, but if he weren’t staying at the motel ...” She’d slipped in the “he,” hoping Candace would confirm that detail, but Candace was more closed than ever.

  “Can I help you with anything else? I am not at liberty to talk about the phone call yesterday.”

  Sadie put a bit more clip into her voice to better match Candace’s tone. “I appreciate your determination to protect their privacy, but this is really important and I promise we’re not trying to get anyone in trouble—them or you.”